In the brown-walled den,
fingers on the pale triangle,
we asked our questions.
The answers were never clear,
but sometimes the spirits spoke:
rattle of windowpanes,
flicker of a street lamp,
a hushed, certain tap.
We held our breaths for initials
of ethereal husbands.
Now I lie with a warm possibility,
Ouija pronouncements hovering
in the future they skated to,
and I start to remember them all—
It's strange what love levitates.
In felt-footed dark, my unpredicted
spells out a past the board didn't know:
First love with The Farm Girl,
soft hulk of regret; fish that ate
each other one afternoon in the tank.
I conjure the tabby cat, dead
of kidney failure while I sang
in the children’s choir, his meow
hazy as the tenor line.
And then it materializes
in the feline glow of midnight—
The glint in his yellow-brown eyes
as he pawed the blue house
to the peak of the roof.